Ashley Rhodes-Courter wrote the original story and submitted it to the New York Times Essay Contest, where it won first prize back in 2004. Mangold’s producing partner Cathy Konrad discovered it at the time and snapped up the film option.

Now Lewis Colick (The Fighter) and Michael Petroni (The Book Thief) have worked together on a script that follows a young Florida girl who is put into the child welfare system at the age of four. Nine years later, an unpaid care volunteer (Witherspoon) discovers her and starts a search for the child’s biological mother (Amanda Seyfried, though she’s still only in talks) to persuade her to surrender her parental rights so the kid can start a new life.